Is There Really an Evolved Capacity for Number?

• Published in: Trends in cognitive sciences Vol. 21; no. 6; pp. 409 - 424
• Main Author: Núñez, Rafael E.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: England Elsevier Ltd 01-06-2017
• Subjects: Aptitude; Biological Evolution; Cognition - physiology; culture; evolution; Humans; Language; Mathematics; Music; nativism; number; numerical cognition; Problem Solving; symbol; numerical cognition; number; symbol; evolution; nativism; culture
• ISSN: 1364-6613; 1879-307X
• DOI: 10.1016/j.tics.2017.03.005

Humans and other species have biologically endowed abilities for discriminating quantities. A widely accepted view sees such abilities as an evolved capacity specific for number and arithmetic. This view, however, is based on an implicit teleological rationale, builds on inaccurate conceptions of biological evolution, downplays human data from non-industrialized cultures, overinterprets results from trained animals, and is enabled by loose terminology that facilitates teleological argumentation. A distinction between quantical (e.g., quantity discrimination) and numerical (exact, symbolic) cognition is needed: quantical cognition provides biologically evolved preconditions for numerical cognition but it does not scale up to number and arithmetic, which require cultural mediation. The argument has implications for debates about the origins of other special capacities – geometry, music, art, and language.
There is a widely accepted view in cognitive neuroscience, child psychology, and animal cognition that there is a biologically evolved capacity specific for number and arithmetic that humans share with other species.
However, data from various sources – humans from non-industrialized cultures, trained nonhuman animals in captivity, and the neuroscience of symbol processing in schooled participants – do not support this view.
The use of loose and misleading technical terminology in ‘numerical cognition’ has facilitated the elaboration of teleological claims which underlie the above view.
Biologically evolved preconditions for quantification do exist, but the emergence of number and arithmetic proper – absent in nonhuman animals – has materialized via cultural preoccupations and practices that are supported by language and symbolic reference – crucial dimensions that lie largely outside natural selection.